Trump’s Fox Friends turned on former colleague John Bolton and suggested that the leak of his impeachment bombshell about Ukraine aid last night was the real wrongdoing.

As The New York Times explained after it got hold of a draft of Bolton’s yet-unpublished manuscript, Bolton undercuts one of Trump’s key impeachment defenses: that the withholding of aid was not tied to his demands for investigation into his political foes. It also provides details that implicate the involvement of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and Attorney General William Barr.

Not surprisingly, Fox & Friends seemed totally uninterested in the revelations and fixated instead on attacking the messengers. There to help the mission was Fox News contributor Mike Huckabee.

Huckabee called the timing “just a little too cute by half and I’m sure that there was nothing coordinated between the publishing of the book and the pre-sales and the fact that The New York Times which can’t find real news if they tried.

Cohost Steve Doocy shouted sarcastically, “ Nothing! Nothing!”

“They always seem to find these leaks. They ought to open a plumbing business because nobody is better at leaks than The New York Slimes, as I like to call them and have for a long time,” Huckabee continued.

That drew giggles from Super-Duper Christian Ainsley Earhardt. Because I’m sure Jesus would love to smear the messenger, too.

“You know, the fact is that this is more about book sales than it is about getting at the truth,” Huckabee continued. “The president’s been very transparent, very clear about what he said, when he said it and to whom he said it and I don’t think there’s any big revelations coming out.”

Talk about avoidance of the truth! The fact is that Bolton directly contradicts Team Trump’s “no quid pro quo” defense.

Not one of the three Fox sycophants noted that fact.

Huckabee went on, unchallenged, by demonizing Democrats and suggesting that there’s no reason to question Trump because he’s better than the other side: “The fact is the Ukrainians got the money that they wanted, they got a heck of a lot more than they got from the previous administration who gave them blankets and MREs. That was all they ever got. I’m not sure what the fuss is about. I just have to believe that this is a lot of manufactured crisis, as some Democrats might use the term.”

Huckabee also claimed that Trump has a right to prevent Bolton (and, presumably Pompeo, Mulvaney and Barr) from testifying because of executive privilege.

Then cohost Brian Kilmeade prompted Huckabee into helping with the message that the real issue is disloyalty to Trump and, therefore, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain or what he is saying:

KILMEADE: Governor, I’m just saying there’s a scenario out there and I think it’s most likely that they put it through the national security process to get it vetted for intelligence reasons about what could appear in the book and somewhere along the process that someone said, oh, this would probably be effective against the president, I’m gonna let it out. And that’s what the Bolton people said happened. Something’s corrupt in the process which would mean there’s somebody else in the administration that has it out for the president that’s working for the president

HUCKABEE: I think one of the most disgusting and frankly dishonorable things that has happened to this president has been people who were willing to take a paycheck from him but could not be loyal [Doocy: “Yup”] and in fact were doing everything they can to undermine him, whether it’s some whistleblower held over from the previous administration who was actually working to undermine [Kilmeade: “Right”] this president’s agenda.

That is dishonorable, it’s dishonest, it’s disgusting and people like that shouldn’t be listened to.

Well, it was Trump who promised he’d “hire the best people,” but all four of the sycophants acted as if they had forgotten.

You can watch the blind loyalty to Dear Leader no matter what, below, from the January 27, 2020 Fox & Friends.

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To hear Hucksterbee tell it, people who work in the administration get their paychecks from Trump (not U.S. taxpayers) and therefore owe their loyalty to him, not the country.
Do none of the low-information Fox News viewers catch this obvious falsehood?

FWIW, I’m predicting two or three senators will vote for witnesses: Romney and Collins and maybe Murkowski. McConnell will “let” Collins show some independence and make sure to have enough votes to vote the measure down. At least as of now. Cruz was talking a witness swap so maybe there are four or more wanting witnesses.

I strongly doubt that any of the 53 GOP senators will vote to have any witnesses, even Bolton. They don’t care. They’re too frightened of the Pence White House and the notion that their heads would be put on pikes.

But past all that, it’s really interesting to hear Mike Huckabee wax nostalgic about executive privilege. I sure don’t recall him granting that to President Obama. As I recall, he and the guys at Fox News were routinely accusing President Obama of covering up “the facts” about such bombshell issues as Solyndra or Joe Sestak and demanding transparency. The second that President Obama discussed anything needing to be confidential, it was treated by Fox News as an immediately impeachable crime. But those rules don’t apply to the Pence White House, now do they?

His people will never turn on him, no matter how egregious his sins. He could behead live babies on live TV from the Oval Office and they’d line up to offer their own as next. There is no nadir he will ever reach – it’s a bottomless pit of corruption and venality.

It doesn’t take deep critical thinking skills to see this is the smoking gun the MAGA cultists have pretended to demand (only because they were confident Trump had effectively silenced all direct witnesses). Now one has been found and they whine over the process of him coming forward.

Of course, we already had a previous public eyewitness confession of “quid pro quo” in Mulvaney the MAGA cultists ignored safe in the knowledge he’d never be able to testify under oath.

I think the continued public vetting of facts in both the House impeachment investigation and now the Senate impeachment trial is very important. While MAGA cultist will defend Trump to the bitter end even if it’s proved he rapes little children, the needle is moving with independents and ever slightly with mainstream Republicans. This makes it essential for Bolton to testify at the Senate impeachment trial.

However, watching the Cult of the 15,000+ Lies on TrumpTV™ and their mirror reflection in the Senate GOP, it’s clear justice won’t be served and Trump will be easily acquitted by a party line vote. Seeing, say, Senator Susan Collin’s latest spineless waffling on witnesses following the Bolton bombshell leak just proves to me you can’t persuade any of these immoral bastards. They shamelessly and spinelessly pander to Trump’s white nationalist base they need to get reelected.

I’m sure there is something clever and caustic a true wit could drop into the conversation right now, something about the band playing on as the Titanic slipped beneath the waves, but I’m damned if I can put my finger on it…